The interactive course which combines video, text, image and screencast content with an Excel based student workbook, covers everything you need to know about formulas and functions like SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX and COUNT. There are units focused on working with text in formulas, and understanding and resolving Excel errors, as well as a key Excel concepts unit for those who need a refresher on the basics.

The thing I like about the course is that it includes quizzes and assessment along the way, and if you pass it all you can get your Certificate of Completion!

For anyone interested in reducing their frustration with Microsoft Excel, Formula School’s Formulas 101 course is for you.

Out of the box by default your OneNote notebook will have lots of blank pages. But if you are using a stylus or pen to take notes with your tablet using OneNote, and you are a messy writer like me… chances are you would prefer to have some lined paper in your OneNote notebook. Not only does it make it easier for you to write neater, it also will help others to read your (horrible) writing!

To add some lines to your paper in OneNote all you need to do is:

Click on the “View” tab in the ribbon

Look for the “Page Setup” group

Click on “Rule Lines” then select your preferred line option

One you are happy with your selection and want to save yourself the hassle of adding rule lines to every page you create… simply repeat the process, but select “Always Create Pages with Rule Lines”

So there you have it – the quick and easy way to add lines to your OneNote notebook!

Do you have multiple sheets in your Excel workbook? Want to have something more descriptive than “Sheet 1”, “Sheet 2”, or “Sheet 3” so you can keep track of all the work in your spreadsheet, model, or budget? It is quick and easy to rename your sheets in Excel 2007, Excel 2010 or Excel 2013.

Right click on the tab for the sheet you want to rename

Click “Rename”

Type your new name in… and then hit enter!

Simple as that – now you can keep track of all those sheets in your workbook with ease.

Ever wanted to create a presentation which you or your audience could print out perfectly on Letter sized (8.5x11in) paper?

Well you can really easily in PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2010, or PowerPoint 2013. What we will do is change the size of the slide to match the size of the paper you want to print or present the presentation on. Let’s see how to do it…

Click on the Design Tab in the Ribbon

Look for the “Customize” group at the far right hand end of the ribbon

Click on “Slide Size”

Click on “Custom Slide Size”

In the “Slide Size” dialog box that appears, select your preferred slide size from the drop down box. In this case select “Letter Paper (8.5x11in).

If you want the slides to be in portrait orientation – so they print out as you would read them naturally on Letter paper… make sure you select “Portrait” in the Slide Orientation section

Recently Paul Woods (the alter ego of The New Paperclip) was a guest on the Chandoo.org Excel podcast – one of the most popular Office related podcasts online today. During the interview he shared his top ten (non-excel related) Microsoft Office tips that every manager or analyst should know.

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet – make sure you read more about it, and listen here:

If you are like me and you want to do some kind of calculation or duration in hours, minutes and seconds – I am sure you have been very frustrated with Excel totally ignoring what you want to achieve! Well did you know that it isn’t as hard as Excel makes it out to be! You can very quickly do calculations like adding two times together, subtracting times from each other, or seeing what the average time is of a range. They key is to ensure that your cells or formatted correctly first. Here is how you do it!

Select the cells that you want to add your times to

Right click, and then select “format cells” from the menu that appears

In the “format cells” dialog box that appears, make sure you are on the “Number” tab

In the category box, select “custom”

Look for a Type in the list which looks like [h]:mm:ss and select it

Click Ok

Now that your numbers are formatted correctly as times, you can start doing your calculations. Simply add, subtract or average like you normally would in excel using formulas like =SUM(), and =AVERAGE()

Have you ever worked on a document with a lot of shapes, diagrams, pictures or text boxes? Don’t you hate it when they overlap or are on top of each other and it is near on impossible to select the right object! You may be like me and move the objects on top to get to the ones below … but did you know that there is an easier, much better way? There is – using the Selection Pane.

The selection pane enables you to select the object by its name, irrespective of where the object is in your document. Not only that, you can make an object invisible for a short amount of time so you can see everything else underneath it!

To turn on the selection pane in Word:

On the “Home” tab, look for the “Editing” group on the right hand side of the screen

Click on the little arrow beside “Select”

Select “Selection Pane”

The selection pane will appear as a task pane on the right hand side of your Word screen. To select an object in your document, simply click on the name of the one you are after. You can make an object invisible by simply clicking on the “eye”. To bring it back, click on the “closed eye”.

Sick and tired or switching back and forward between your dictionary, thesaurus or encyclopedia when you are not quite sure what a word means when you are reading a document in Microsoft Word? Maybe you are writing a document and you want to make sure what a word means before you publish your document?

Then the new Define tool in Word 2013 is a great tool that will help you be more accurate.

To use the Define tool:

Select and highlight the word that you want to dive deeper on and get a definition of

Go to the “Review” tab in the ribbon

Look for the “Proofing” group on the left hand side of the ribbon

Click on the “Define” button

On the right hand side of the screen you will see a new task pane appear. This will show the definition of the word you were looking for from the Bing Dictionary.

As a bonus you can also hear how a word sounds like by clicking on the speaker beside the word in the task pane. Perfect if you are going to talk to someone about your document in the future!

Ever wanted to change the text in your Word document to ALL CAPS or UPPERCASE… what about all lowercase? Maybe sentence case? Capitalize Each Word? oR sWITCH tHE cASE aLTOGETHER?

The good news is that you don’t need to retype that sentence, paragraph or (heaven forbid if you wrote a document in all caps) the entire document. There is a quick and easy way to change the case of text in Word 2013.

Highlight the text you want to change the case of

On the “Home” tab, in the “Font” group, look for the button that looks like “Aa” (it should be a few buttons to the right of where you set the font and font size). That is the “Change Case” button. Click on the button

Select the option you prefer from the menu that appears:Sentence case.lowercaseUPPERCASECapitalize Each WordtOGGLE eACH cASE

Ever wondered how many work days there are between two dates? Maybe you are counting down the number of days you have left in the office before your big holiday? Maybe you just need to know how many days you have until that project is due? Whatever the reason, using Excel you can calculate the number of business days between two dates.

To do so, we will use the NETWORKDAYS formula.

Type the two dates you want to calculate the number of days betwen into Excel – in one cell type the date you want to calculate from, and the other cell the date you want to calculate to

In another cell, type =NETWORKDAYS(

Select the first cell – if you typed the first date in A1 the formula will now look like =NETWORKDAYS(A1

type a comma

Select the second cell – if you typed the second date in B1 the formular will now look like =NEWWORKDAYS(A1,B1

Type the closing bracket to complete the formula – it will now look like =NETWORKDAYS(A1,B1)

Hit enter!

There you have it, the number of days you need to wait until you go away, or the number of days to countdown until that deadline!